With long waitlists at bike shops, this mechanic is helping Mile End get out on two wheels
Juan Carlos Lorena went from ballet dancing to repairing bikes after the pandemic forced him to change careers
On a Thursday afternoon in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood, a group of young boys from the Hasidic Jewish community watch eagerly as Juan Carlos Lorena begins his daily transformation of a nondescript garage in their neighbourhood into a bike repair workshop.
The garage sits in a quiet alley between Esplanade Avenue and Jeanne-Mance Street.
As Lorena opens its automatic door to reveal the dozens and dozens of bikes within, he smiles widely at the boys' impatience for him to take a look at their bikes.
"I'm kind of the friend of these kids because they come here every day to talk to me and ask me if I can help with a little problem in their wheel, or their brakes or with a tire that's low on air," he says.
Lorena often gives those small repairs away for free. And he keeps the prices he charges for more complex jobs as low as possible.
He calls his shop Vélo Talachas — talacha being Mexican slang for an improvised repair job or the place where that repair gets done.
WATCH | Vélo Talachas serves Mile End out of a rented garage:
Ballet to bike repairs
Lorena's goal is to serve his community, which includes artists with limited means as much as it does big families on a budget.
His concern for artists, and their pocketbooks, comes directly from his own experience. Until the pandemic hit, he made his living as a ballet dancer.
It was ballet that brought Lorena to Montreal four years ago. But when the pandemic brought live performances to a halt, he decided it was time for a career change.
A six-month, government-funded training course in bike repair was just the opportunity he needed to make a fresh start.
"I needed something I can feel passion about and not get bored," he says. "I also wanted to help people and not just do something for me but also for the society around me."
The course wasn't even over before Lorena began offering repairs to customers.
In November, he launched a mobile service in a park near his Hochelaga–Maisonneuve apartment, meeting clients in their yards or on the street to repair their bikes.
Then two months ago, just as cyclists began to once again fill the streets, Lorena opened the Mile End garage after finding the rental space through a Facebook group.
He says his wife got tired of having dozens of half-repaired bikes stacked up on their balcony.
Lorena's customers contact him on social media for an appointment or just stop by the garage. He'll let them know if he can do the repair right away or if he needs them to come back another day.
As many of the city's commercial bike shops now have weeks-long wait lists, his low prices and quick turnaround have kept him busy.
Happy customers
Pierre Bocage is a retired teacher who lives 10 houses away from the garage, on Jeanne Mance Street.
"He is a very nice person, he is efficient. He does not tell you that your bike needs a lot of repairs as the other bike repair shops may have done," he says. "He just repairs what is wrong and that's it."
Rodney Handelsman also lives in Mile End, a couple of blocks from the garage.
"It's been difficult to get all of the bikes repaired for my four young kids," says Handelsman. "So it's a dream come true."
'I think I'm in better shape!'
Working in the garage each afternoon, Lorena takes on everything from small repairs to rebuilding an entire bike. He also accepts donations of broken down bikes and gives them a second life, often donating the final result to charities for children or adults who cannot afford to buy their own.
"When [friends] look at me now, they know I love what I'm doing," says Lorena. "Working with bicycles all day is hard, so even though I don't dance anymore, I think I'm in better shape!"
Lorena isn't sure he'll go back to dancing, even as performance spaces reopen. But he says his goal was never to open a shop when he started the bike repair training course.
He wants to continue to emphasize the community service side of the business, and perhaps expand it with more mechanics who want to support both cycling and recycling, as he does, and contribute to a better, greener world.
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With files and video from Chloë Ranaldi